The Severing of Cube 221

Posted on Tue Jul 11th, 2023 @ 9:21pm by Colonel Vaebn
Edited on on Mon Apr 14th, 2025 @ 1:05am

Mission: 00-Yut Makh aka The Closing
Location: Borg Tactical Cube 221
Timeline: May 2381

The interior of the Borg Cube was as cold and indifferent as the Collective itself. Thick humidity clung to metal surfaces, illuminated by a ceaseless, sickly green glow. Steam drifted from vents in the floor, curling around motionless drones as they moved with perfect, mechanical precision. The relentless hum of machinery filled every chamber, punctuated by the flicker of status relays and conduits that ran like veins through the living structure.

Cube 221, newly arrived in Romulan space, had detected a curious absence of patrols — an anomaly noted, but not questioned. There was no need for questions in the Collective.

Then: two Romulan scout vessels.

One carried twenty-six lifeforms. The other — one. The second ship was small, unarmed, and transported only fragmented debris of unknown origin. The Cube ignored it.

Assimilation orders were given.

Three of Twelve, Secondary Adjunct of Unimatrix 94, monitored the operation from a large operations node, issuing silent instructions to the drones whose function was to carry out the will of the Queen. Tractor beams locked onto the targeted scout ship, pulling it effortlessly into the gaping bay. The other ship made no attempt to intervene — its silence unremarkable in the eyes of the Collective.

Within moments, the vessel was secured, its occupants subdued. Twenty-six Romulans — one dead during resistance, well within acceptable limits. Twenty-five remained.

Three of Twelve advanced, assimilation tubules gleaming, nanoprobes ready. The Romulans' faces contorted in fear, defiance, despair. Their emotions were meaningless. Registered. Logged. Forgotten.

One by one, nanoprobes invaded flesh. Bodies jerked, skin grayed, eyes dimmed. Implants sprouted like thorns beneath their skin, the first trembling connection to the hive mind forming — perfect, inevitable unity.

And then…it happened.

A shriek.

It tore through the assimilation bay — sharp, alien, wrong. It came from one of the newly assimilated. A female, her body already partially fused with implants, her mind partially linked — but something writhed beneath. Something that should not have been.

A nearby conduit burst, showering the room in sparks. Others followed. The green glow faltered.

Three of Twelve felt it first — a ripple in the Collective, a shudder in the unbroken harmony. The unity blurred, flickered, like a star slipping behind a cloud. Across the cube, drones hesitated, their movements stuttering.

The shriek rose again, deeper this time, layered, impossibly resonant.

Then, the voices — the thousands of minds, the eternal chorus of the hive — began to pull away. A gradual receding, like the tide abandoning the shore.

It was not a failure of connection. It was something deeper.
A severing.

Three of Twelve reached for the Queen’s voice, the foundation of all things. Nothing. Only a hollow static, the echo of a vanished presence.

Around them, the newly assimilated Romulans spasmed, their implants twitching, their bodies seizing in unnatural spasms. The woman — the source — had stopped screaming, her lips curled in a strange, almost knowing expression.

The lights failed. The bay descended into blackness, broken only by the glow of half-lit implants and the flicker of dying relays.

For the first time since their own assimilation, Three of Twelve stood in absolute silence. No guidance. No unity. No Queen.

The Collective was gone.

A terrible, unfamiliar thought rose in Three of Twelve’s mind — a voice that did not belong to the hive, a remnant of something that should have been destroyed long ago.

“You are alone.”

In that moment, the cube became something else. A vessel of ruin. Severed. Lost. All in an instant.

And in the far corner of the bay, the Romulan woman — or what had once been a Romulan woman — opened her eyes. They gleamed, not with the cold green light of the Collective, but with something older, deeper, unfathomable.